Guiding our teens

Schools and families can't afford to be passive in this space.

Recently, I’m sure along with many of you, I watched the Netflix series called Adolescence - twice, in fact! Not only because it was encapsulating to watch, but because it presented insights I hadn’t considered in that way before, offering such an unfiltered, confronting look at the lives our teenagers are growing up in today. It made me reflect deeply on the challenges they face and the role we all play as schools, parents and communities in guiding them through it. The show surfaced some deeply uncomfortable realities: the pressure to perform masculinity, the absence of healthy role models in online spaces, and the way silence from adults is often filled by the internet. What unsettled me most wasn’t the behaviour, it was the vacuum. When we, as the adults in their lives, don’t speak clearly or often enough about relationships, respect, emotion, and identity, young people look elsewhere. And what they find isn’t always safe. 
It reinforced a constantly niggling thought: schools and families can’t afford to be passive in this space. The digital world is shaping how our children and young people see themselves and others, and it’s doing so at a pace that education and regulation are only just beginning to catch up with. 
What we do know is this: social media has been engineered to be addictive. And its impact is showing up in classrooms, counselling rooms, and dinner table conversations. The very sight of a device can trigger a dopamine hit. Emotional regulation is shifting. We are seeing increasing numbers of young people struggling with body image, anxiety, and the inability to cope without a screen in hand. 
Even though the mobile phone ban that we have at Cornerstone brings its ongoing challenges (and challenging conversations!), we believe strongly that it helps, in some way, to protect our students from online bullying while at the College, to promote concentration in our classrooms, and help increase laughter and conversation in the College yard. Of course, this isn’t a silver bullet - technology use is a complex issue, and what happens outside of school matters just as much. But setting boundaries (as best we can), during the school day is one practical step we can take together to create safer, more connected environments for our young people.
At Cornerstone, we are watching this space closely and thinking carefully about how to respond.

I only wish our young people could see themselves as the magnificent, interesting, capable, beautiful people that we see when we look at them!
There is no perfect answer. But there are a few things we can hold onto: we need to be present; we need to be united; we need to be brave enough to have the hard conversations, even when it’s awkward, emotional, or complex.

Morgan Brookes
Head of Senior School